"More to the point, as long as they declare it, is it OK for European consultancies to advise Gazprom, for instance, on how to take over EU energy utilities? And what of NGOs financed by the Commission, meaning you and me? Can they lobby for or against Commission policy, as they please, as long as they are registered?I forgot. Form before substance, that is the very first principle of transparency.

100,000 to find out the gender bias of trumpets. Good spend of taxpayers cash don't you think?

The Swedish Research Council has granted over USD 100,000 to a three year project in musical sciences, “The trumpet as symbol of gender”, which intends to seek suspected gender-specific vocalities of the instrument. The gender insanity reaches new heights, writes Tanja Bergkvist.

To the serious Belgian press, the EU is as about as important as Latvian poetry,

So what did Peter Vandermeersch, chief editor of De Standaard answer? Basically he avoided answering the question (”don’t think we have a poor record…hahaha”) and instead compared the EU with the ‘obscure’ topic of Latvian poems claiming that an editor has to make editorial decisions and needs to listen to the customers (not readers or citizens!) - And he continues: “Latvian poems can be beautiful but are not relevant…”